About the Night (27 page)

“What did they say?” Nomi was curious just how he would phrase it.

“They’d say that she was dating an Arab,” Elias told her. “The Haganah had a unit for trailing mixed Arab-Jewish couples. Being in such a relationship was putting yourself in the line of fire. The only question was when you would get hit.

“Once I came over with some Cadbury chocolate. She hadn’t seen chocolate in months, but first she offered some to me. I declined. She ate a single row and put the rest in her purse.”

While he talked, Nomi could taste the chocolate, a square of it on her tongue the moment before she would bite into it.

“One evening,” Elias said, a smile rising on his face as he remembered, “we both managed to get to the Rex cinema on Princess Mary Street. Separately, of course. When the lights went out, I sat down next to her. This was a tiny victory over the evil people and organizations keeping us apart. We watched the film, and I’ll never forget the feeling of her elbow touching mine. It’s something no one will ever be able to take away from me. There, in that dark and smoky cinema, we forgot our woes. God, I thought, how much I love to be with her, how much I even love doing nothing when it’s with her. When the lights went on, she slipped out, and I went home.

“Now I want to tell you something. When you come here, I tell you stories, and after you leave I ask myself why I didn’t tell you this or that so you’d understand better.”

Nomi smiled. “So, now tell me this or that,” she said.

“But now I hear Munir approaching,” Elias said, “because his shoes have leather soles.”

Nomi got to her feet as Munir entered the room. He washed his hands with pink disinfectant soap. Elias looked as though he was ready for his guests to leave, but Nomi knew he did that on purpose so that they would feel comfortable leaving him. She put her hand in his, and he held it, gently.

Munir strapped himself into the passenger seat of Nomi’s car as soon as he sat down. He was sorry when Nomi turned off the Sting song that was playing, but he said nothing.

“I hope I didn’t hold you up by staying and chatting with him,” Nomi said.

“Not at all,” Munir answered. “It’s very good that you come to visit him. It means a lot to him.”

“Did he tell you that?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “but I know him.”

Munir tried to reduce his presence, to take up as little space as possible. He held his knees together and placed the leather bag on top of them. He was gentle and considerate not to be a burden.

“Elias told me to bring you to wherever you want,” Nomi said, smiling, “so of course we have to do what he says.” She had linked them together to the same purpose and banished his embarrassment and uneasiness.

As they drove away from the hospital, Nomi did not share with him just how happy she was to leave there, free as a heron soaring to the treetops. She knew little about the man sitting next to her other than the fact that for many years he had been Elias’s confidant, his right-hand man, as close as a brother. She had noticed in the hospital that he was shy and polite and ill at ease with women. She wondered if he knew about Lila during the forbidden years, but if so, she realized that even under torture he would never have given away a word about it.

Suddenly, from the trunk came the sound of a children’s song. “What’s that?” asked Munir, his head swiveling. “An ice cream truck?”

When Nomi laughed, Munir wanted to ask what toothpaste she used to get her teeth that white.

She said, “It’s a toy. I’ve always got lots of them in the car.” She knew he would not wish to burden her with questions, so she carried on without prompting. “I’ve got dolls that start talking and bunnies that drum while I’m driving.”

Munir listened without looking at her.

“I work with children,” she said.

“A nursery school teacher?” he guessed.

“Adoption,” she told him. “I work for Adoption Services. We find homes for children.”

“I see,” Munir said. “That must be difficult.”

“Abandoned babies,” Nomi explained, “babies whose parents endanger their lives, children that are orphaned. They all need a mother and a father who will care for them. We’re like a repair service trying to fix broken reality.”

“Are there many such children?” Munir asked.

“There are more people who want to adopt than there are babies for adoption,” Nomi said in her professional voice, the one she used to answer the questions of members of Knesset or journalists. “There is a five or six-year wait at present, but there’s nothing we can do to shorten it. Mostly, people want babies. There’s not really a waiting list at all for the older children we look after. Some of them are damaged by violent and difficult families. We remove them from such homes.”

Munir felt a stab of pain at the thought of children being raised in destructive homes. Reflective, he said, “Even grown-up children sometimes need different parents.”

“Parents for grown-up children,” Nomi said. “What a shame there’s not an agency for that.”

On the way down Agron Street, the traffic was heavy, and Nomi approached the jam slowly. He had been apprehensive about a long car trip with a woman at the wheel, but he had to admit that she was calm and assured as a driver.

“Once,” he said as a police siren wailed nearby, “this was a beautiful, quiet street with almost no traffic.”

“I remember,” Nomi said. “I grew up not far from here, on Hamaalot Street. Do you know it?”

“Sure,” he said. He restrained himself from telling her that he knew the names of all the streets and which streets led into them. Nor did he tell her that the city was small and pleasant before the onslaught of annexation and expansion. “That’s where the Baptist Church was,” he said.

“That’s right,” Nomi said with a smile. “You’re more of a Jerusalemite than all those people who’ve filled up the city in the last fifty years.”

Munir did not wish to hit on that sensitive subject of Jews and Arabs and who was here first. Everything was so touchy and raw that it was better avoided. All he said was, “I’ll get out at the New Gate, if that’s all right.”

“I’ll take you where you need to go,” Nomi said.

“The New Gate will be just fine,” Munir insisted.

“Your Hebrew is excellent,” Nomi noted. “And up-to-date.”

“I’ve been hearing Hebrew from the time I was born,” Munir said, “and speaking like I hear it. Jews and Arabs lived here, bought and sold here, ate and drank together here, until the big shots came along and destroyed everything.”

“Will you visit Elias tomorrow as well?” Nomi asked.

“Every morning,” Munir said.

“What kind of cookies does he like best?”

“Almond,” he said. “But don’t tell him I said so.”

“Crispy or soft?”

“Fresh,” he said.

Nomi thought she saw a smile forming at the edge of his lips, a first. She had the feeling that he was not counting the days since he had started his hospital visits but merely doing what he felt was right. Preparing to leave the car, he tightened his scarf and took a woolen cap from his bag. “Elias’s father brought it from England for me thirty years ago,” he said. “Up here there’s a protest tent, and in a moment we’ll come to excavations on the right side. They’re always digging up something. You can stop here,” he said, and he freed himself from the seat belt. “Thank you,” Munir said when his body was nearly out the door of the car.

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you,” Nomi responded.

1964

It was Mano who brought Margo back from the hospital and walked her slowly up the stairs. Long minutes passed between the moment that Nomi had spotted them from the window as they were swallowed into the entrance of the building until their footsteps could be heard. Her father was down at the oil fields in the Negev, or, as her mother liked to say, “He’s never around when you need him.” The hidden meaning in that statement was that even when he was around, Margo had no use for him whatsoever.

Nomi opened the door. Although it was hot outside, her mother was trembling, her teeth rattling. Her lips were drained of color. Mano led her to the bed, speaking softly: “Here, like this, slowly . . . you’ll feel better soon. There’s nothing like being at home in your own bed.” He pulled the covers over her, darkened the room, and tiptoed out. “She’s asleep,” he whispered to Nomi. “Your mother is very tired,” he added.

He put the kettle on for tea and asked if Nomi had eaten anything that day. When she said she hadn’t, he opened the refrigerator and the pantry, then glanced at his watch. He went down to the local grocer for a loaf of bread, butter, a slice of salty cheese, and a cube of halvah wrapped in wax paper.

“Aren’t you eating with me?” Nomi asked.

“I’m not hungry,” Mano told her. “I don’t like hospitals. They take away my appetite.”

But the crust of the bread made a nice crunching sound when he sliced into it, and then everything was so soft and good smelling that he couldn’t help himself. They ate on the small kitchen table without plates or cutlery. From time to time, he cut off a little more from the cheese or the halvah until there were only tiny wedges of each. He let out a
pshhhhh
of surprise at how quickly the food was disappearing.

After they had gathered up the crumbs and put what was left of the loaf of bread in the bread box, Nomi asked what was wrong with her mother.

“Nothing,” Mano said. “She’s just weak and needs to rest.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Nomi persisted.

“She’s not sick,” Mano said. “She just doesn’t have any strength right now.”

“So why was she in the hospital if she’s not sick?”

“There are things,” he started, “things that are . . . hard to explain. Problems that grown-ups have. Like dizziness. And stomachaches.”

He lit a cigarette, perhaps to deflect the questions of a girl whose senses had taught her when things were being kept from her, and stepped out onto the balcony, the match between his teeth like a toothpick. He leaned on the railing, sucked down the cigarette to its very end, and threw the burning butt from the fourth floor down to the neglected yard below. When he came back inside, he phoned work and told them he was held up at the hospital. Nomi took note that her beloved uncle had said something untrue. Still, she thought he wasn’t bad because she had no other uncle like Mano.

The only good thing about Mano’s job, Margo would say, was that he could run around like a spinning top from morning to night, jumping into the car, driving, meeting people here and there, making contacts, winning over admiring women. To which Mano would claim that if he were closed up in an office, he would curl up and die; put him under a fluorescent light and he would become ill. He needed sunshine and the noise of a car’s engine and people extending a welcome. Just like his older brother, Nomi’s father, who spent his days on the go, back and forth across the country in his van and happy with the distances even though he talked about his endless trips as if they were a life sentence.

Uncle Mano discovered a bottle of Al-Zahlawi arak in the living room buffet and poured all that remained inside it—a quarter of a glass—for himself, then drank it down in a gulp and sighed loudly, shaking his head. Without being asked, he announced that it helped his toothache. Nomi nodded, already having heard this from him and others.

“Are you leaving?” she asked, afraid he would not be staying longer with her.

“No, sweet girl,” he said. “I’m staying. Your mother might need me.”

Nomi hoped he would say he was staying with her, to watch over her. After all, she was still little. Sometimes they all forgot that.

Uncle Mano said, “I’m just going to get a little shut-eye. You keep an eye on the house. Why don’t you draw me one of your stories?”

“Which?”

“The kind with speech bubbles coming out of people’s mouths.”

“About what?”

He fell asleep on his back, fully dressed, with his shoes on and without a care, her father’s younger brother. They looked alike, though Mano might even be better looking. Both were thin but sturdy with the same tanned olive skin, the same wide smile full of light, the same strong hands, and the same bulging vein at their temples that throbbed when they were angry or upset. Mano was thirty-six and charming and made everyone jealous with the way he managed his life with ease, unlike Menash, who had turned forty and had a face already lined with humiliation and desperation and anxiety about making a living as the head of a household. Menash returned home exhausted and left happily.

Several days before her mother had been taken to the hospital, Nomi had overheard a conversation between Margo and Lila.

“You can’t go on like this,” Lila warned her. “You’re playing them off against each other.”

“I can do whatever I want,” Margo retorted.

Lila lowered her voice. “It’s not going to end well.”

“I’ve paid for my stupidity,” Margo said, “for marrying that good-for-nothing man.”

“You wanted him,” Lila reminded her. “You were willing to do just about anything to have him.”

“So what did I get for all my efforts?” Margo said venomously. “I won him, then what did I discover? That he’s a walking failure. I should have listened to you back then and given myself to his brother, who was always crazy about me.”

“And still is,” Lila said. Then she fell silent, perhaps because they suddenly noticed Nomi’s shadow on the wall.

Nomi refused to wear the glasses prescribed by her doctor and overcame her weak eyes with the help of her other senses. She could hear the slightest sounds, was sensitive to every texture and touch, and her nose caught every scent, including whatever was cooking in neighbors’ homes, perfumes and soaps, dead birds, sweat, medicines. She squinted in sunlight and could not read as much as she would have liked. When she sobbed and cried, she was warned that tears were particularly harmful to her, so she made a point of crying only when alone. By the time she was seven, she had already been operated on twice, operations that held the promise of improved vision, but which in fact had caused her terrible pain and given only modest results. Uncle Mano reassured her that by the time she was an adult, scientists would already have found a method for strengthening her eyes, but in the meantime she would be the apple of his eye.

To her ears, Mano’s voice was soft and pleasant when he spoke to her, when he was happy to see her, when he drove her around in his car and hummed guitar music from The Shadows. The car, with its leather seats, was always at his beck and call, since Mrs. Westfried refused to give up her driver after fifteen years of service.

Margo said, “Even if she lives to a hundred, she’ll still have millions, and who’s she going to leave it all to, the grandchildren she doesn’t have?” Margo had the feeling she was owed something since it was she who had found the job for Mano. However, the passing years had proven that she couldn’t expect a commission from the old lady, ever.

Mano called her “Mrs. Westfried”—never Helga—and never began a conversation with her unless she spoke to him first. He did everything she asked of him: he reported to her each morning at eight o’clock
punkt
to help her with her errands around town, the windows all opened exactly halfway; he kept the car clean and polished; he wore a uniform of polyester trousers, a pressed shirt, and well-shined shoes; and he stashed a first-aid kit and fruit-flavored hard candies in the glove compartment.

When he drove around town in that shiny green Ford, everyone looked at him. His love of cars was so huge that he was even willing to do Mrs. Westfried’s shopping for her: the German books, the rye crackers, the string of frankfurters, the imported apple juice, the seltzer maker, the intimate items from the perfumery. He bought ground coffee for her in the same shop that prepared Golda Meir’s beans. Sometimes he did the shopping while Mrs. Westfried sat in the backseat.

Mrs. Westfried told Mano his place as her driver was assured as long as he remained unmarried. He imitated her German when he said, “The person who marries is an imbecile!”

“But what about love, Mrs. Westfried?” Mano asked her.

“Love?” she sputtered. “Even the mightiest fire becomes ashes. Those butterflies in the stomach crumble, and all that noise becomes a matter of settling scores: you said, you promised, you forgot, you disappeared, you disappointed. Who needs it? And who needs children who look at you like a burden? And who ever came up with this institution of housing a man and a woman in the same home, the same bedroom, for forty years? Look at you, Mano, as free and light as a down comforter. If you marry, you’ll be handcuffed.”

Mrs. Westfried preached the beauties of single life and perhaps had an effect on him. That, anyway, was how he presented it. “She’s poisoned me, the old lady,” he would joke. He had never knelt before a woman or agreed to any offers of marriage that had come his way. In their world of married couples groaning under the weight of loans and debts, Mano was the exception. Everyone who was jealous of his freedom tried to marry him off even when they failed time after time. Only Margo sighed in relief whenever another matchmaking effort passed, like some winter storm that had blown through without doing any damage.

She could not fathom losing the man who idolized her. He did not bind himself to any woman because he could not find one that would surpass Margo.

Uncle Mano opened his eyes and sat up, sloughing off this unplanned, snatched nap. “I dozed off,” he said guiltily. “Don’t know what happened to me. I slept like a dead man.”

“I listened at the door,” Nomi said, reassuring him. “Mother’s still sleeping.”

“You’re a good girl,” he said, “and I’m going to make us some sweet tea, and then we’ll play Battleships, and I’ll beat you like I always do. Well, maybe today you’ll win. Who knows?”

He returned from the kitchen carrying two glass mugs. From outside in the stairwell came the sound of high heels making their way up the stairs. There was no mistaking whom they belonged to.

Nomi cried, “It’s Lila!” and she ran to the door.

Lila looked worried, but Uncle Mano put her at ease and told her that Margo had been sleeping for hours already. He gazed at Lila and said, “It’s good to see you, oh fairest among women.”

To which she responded, “And you, most eligible bachelor in Jerusalem.”

He made a glass of tea for her and sat on the bed in Nomi’s room. The living room was kept dark and closed and was used only for guests.

“How did it go?” Lila asked, her eyes wandering toward Margo’s shut bedroom door.

“It went,” Mano said.

Lila said, “I was sure it would take hold this time. I had a good feeling.”